HTC Sues Apple In The UK, Following ITC Ruling

The legal battle between HTC and Apple continues with a new lawsuit filed in the UK. HTC Europe has filed a complaint against Apple with the High Court of Justice, Chancery Division in London. The complaint was originally filed on July 29, but the exact details of the case have yet to be revealed.

Just two weeks ago, the US International Trade Commission (ITC), in a preliminary ruling, found HTC to be infringing on two of Apple’s patents. This was after Apple filed its second complaint against HTC seeking to block the import of the infringing products, which include both smartphones and tablets.

HTC has since also filed a complaint against Apple with the ITC, which has found Apple to be infringing on the S3 patents that HTC recently purchased. However, those patents only affect Apple’s desktop Mac platform and does not affect its more lucrative mobile iOS platform. This leaves very little negotiating chips for HTC to reach a settlement with Apple.

And although HTC has figured out workarounds for the infringing technologies and plans to implement them for all 2012 products, it could still face an import ban should a settlement not be reached by November. The company is rumored to already be paying $5 per Android device to Microsoft from a patent-related settlement.